Translating Aesop's fables

'The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing', 'The Tortoise and the Hare', 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' and 'The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg' are fables commonly told to children, but did you know that Aesop's fables weren't originally intended for children? Aristotle was drawn to them and Socrates put them into verse while he was awaiting execution. Willis Regier, director of the University of Illinois Press, has discovered that English language translations of Aesop's fables have had a colourful history, as he outlines in his essay 'No Children's Tale' in the online journal Chronicle Review.

Nine translators have dominated English versions of these stories. One of the translators brought the printing press to England and another was caught up in royalist battles at the time of Cromwell. His versions were denounced for polluting the minds of children.

Transcript

Ramona Koval: 'The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing', 'The Tortoise and the Hare', 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' and 'The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg' are fables commonly told to children. But while you might be familiar with the fables, you might not know much about the man who wrote them, Aesop, or how many translations of these popular stories there have been, or which ones are true to the original ancient Greek versions. And did you know did you know that the fables weren't originally intended for children? Aristotle was drawn to them and Socrates put Aesop's fables into verse while he was awaiting execution.

Willis Regier has discovered that English language translations and translators of Aesop's fables have had a colourful history. One of the translators brought the printing press to England and another was caught up in royalist battles at the time of Cromwell, and his versions were denounced for polluting the minds of children.

Willis Regier is director of the University of Illinois Press, and his essay on the politics of Aesop translations is in the online journal Chronicle Review. He joins us now on the phone from Illinois. Welcome to The Book Show Willis.

Willis Regier: Good morning.

Ramona Koval: Before we talk about the translations, tell me, what do we know about Aesop? Was he a real man, do we know anything about him?

Willis Regier: There is some historical evidence that he was a real man. He is mentioned in Herodotus, for instance, and he appears several times in the works of Plutarch, but exactly who he was or when he lived is a matter of some dispute. There was a legendary life of Aesop that is still in print in some editions, and it's fascinating in the sense that it shows Aesop alive, surviving by telling fables and various predicaments to get himself out of trouble.

Ramona Koval: He was reputed to be perhaps a slave from Ethiopia and probably black.

Willis Regier: That seems to be the source, yes, he was considered to be a slave in Egypt at the same time Rhodopis, another famous slave, was there, and then moved around the eastern Mediterranean, finally dying at the Delphi where he was falsely accused of stealing sacred objects.

Ramona Koval: But he's sometimes depicted as being white, but some of the animals that he told about weren't ones that were native to the areas in which the fables seemed to have gained currency, so they are possibly from Africa.

Willis Regier: Possibly yes, but we need to remember that at this time there were lions still in Europe and in Asia minor.

Ramona Koval: Did he write his fables down?

Willis Regier: No, probably not. The history of the fables being written down is still something of a mystery, but the earliest forms seem to have occurred in the period of the Alexandrian library, which would be some centuries after his life.

Ramona Koval: And the first Latin translation?

Willis Regier: Shortly thereafter most of the fables that we now know were transmitted in Latin through the Middle Ages, and it was only with great labour that the Greek forms have been reconstructed or retrieved by scholars all over Europe.

Ramona Koval: So how many fables are there, and how do we know how many there are?

Willis Regier: That depends. Some collections have as many as 600 and some as few as 100. It is hard to determine which exactly were Aesop's, so what most scholars now talk about is the 'Aesop tradition', those fables that have been attributed to Aesop. We can say with some certainty that a certain number of them were attributed to him in ancient times, but the whole corpus is still in dispute.

Ramona Koval: I suppose every time you have a fox and a duck you think Aesop, no matter what.

Willis Regier: I think that's probably likely, yes.

Ramona Koval: You say that over the last 500 years nine translators stand out, and also Aesop translations are rivalled only by translations of the Bible. Why did you go searching for the ultimate Aesop translation?

Willis Regier: I am at a university, and in the university you're trained to try to find the best translation to use in a work, and I was doing a book on flattery and needed to find the best fable that told the story of the fox and the crow. That led to looking at all kinds of translations of Aesop and I got distracted for quite some time because Aesop is fascinating.

Ramona Koval: Briefly tell me about the fox and the crow again.

Willis Regier: I'd be happy to. A crow stole a piece of cheese and went to a branch to eat it, and a fox, seeing him and wanting that cheese, thought quickly and said, 'Oh Crow, I hear that crows have a most beautiful singing voice. Is that true? Could I hear you sing?' And the crow thought, well, I didn't know I had a great singing voice but if people say I do then, sure, I'll sing for him. He opened his beak and began to sing, the cheese fell out, the fox grabbed it and ran away.

Ramona Koval: So you were doing this book on flattery, and so you wanted to use this. Were you worried about whether that was the best translation of that particular story?

Willis Regier: I was, and I finally decided to use the La Fontaine translation or version of Aesop because it captures the original Greek very, very closely, and also it would indicate, by being La Fontaine, how long the tradition has lived and how important it was to very prestigious writers in Europe.

Ramona Koval: Was it in verse, because he did a lot of verse translation, didn't he?

Willis Regier: Yes, he did.

Ramona Koval: Was the original in verse?

Willis Regier: Apparently so. There are Greek versions and Latin versions that were told in verse, by Babrius and Phaedrus.

Ramona Koval: That would make them easier to remember, wouldn't it.

Willis Regier: Yes.

Ramona Koval: Because we're looking at the politics of translation of Aesop's fables, tell me, were the fables political in his day?

Willis Regier: Oh certainly. In fact the stories of Aesop telling fables frequently involved political decisions that people were having trouble making and he would tell a fable that would help them resolve the issue. Many of these fables have to do with being discrete, being careful, not making yourself too conspicuous and just trusting the power of the king.

Ramona Koval: I suppose a lot of the gods were changing into animals and back into human and godly forms at the time too, weren't they, so stories about animals were probably quite common.

Willis Regier: The metamorphoses are associated with Ovid. Aesop's animals tend to stay the same, and foxes will have a set of characteristics, lions will have a set of characteristics, wolves too, and although these change somewhat from fable to fable, Aesop was able to take advantage of the presumed character of the different animals to try and describe problems in human life that the animals gave him a discrete way of discussing.

Ramona Koval: Let's talk about the translators because the main translations you mentioned are by William Caxton from the 15th century, Roger L'Estrange in the 17th, and then Samuel Croxall. These different translations really highlight how political translation can be, not just in the text but also in the moral of the story. So let's look at William Caxton who did the first translation of Aesop's fables into English. He, of course, of the printing press, but what was his contribution to the collection, and how close to the originals were his versions?

Willis Regier: He translated from a Latin translation, so he did not get it from the original Greek, but he was exceedingly important, as you know, because he was the first printer to set up an established press in England. Many of the things that he chose indicate what was important in England at that time, and one of the first things that he decided to do was this translation of Aesop's fables.

Ramona Koval: What about Roger L'Estrange? He was a royalist, was against Charles I and was pardoned by Cromwell. What about the politics of his translation with the tale of the eagle and the fox?

Willis Regier: That's a fascinating fable. Not many people will know this fable, they'll know lots of the other ones that you referred to when you were introducing this segment. The 'Eagle and the Fox' deals with a fox and eagle setting up home together in the same tree, and the eagle took advantage of the fox being away to grab the fox's offspring and brought them to her nest to feed to her own children. The fox discovered this and begged the eagle to let her have her little cubs back, and the eagle said no. The fox then ran and got fire, brought it to the tree and threatened to set the tree afire. Here's where the tales diverge. In Croxall's version and in many of the other versions the eagle sees the threat to her own home and her own children and then lets the fox have her cubs back. But in L'Estrange's version the cubs have already been fed to the eaglets, the fox decides to have her revenge, sets the tree afire and the eaglets fall into the fox's mouth already roasted. So, two different versions of the fable with obviously two different morals about revenge or the threat of retribution.

Ramona Koval: So in terms of the politics of the same, what was Roger saying?

Willis Regier: He said 'I will have my revenge', and he did. He lost his power, he came back to power, became the censor for the government of England and got to choose what was being published.

Ramona Koval: And even though they're thought of as children's stories they weren't originally intended for children and it was after the time of Roger L'Estrange that they were translated more for children. So what prompted that shift?

Willis Regier: A number of things. First, Aesop's fables have been used for thousands of years as a way of teaching languages and teaching morals at the same time, so there has been that tradition. People in England were taught Latin by using Latin versions of Aesop's fables for centuries. That was one connection. The other is that the fables began to be considered, in some respects, inappropriate for children, so certain fables were removed, they were no longer told in the most popular version, or they were bowdlerised or otherwise altered. It becomes interesting then to look at the different translations to see which fables are included and which are excluded for fear that the children ought not to learn this fable.

Ramona Koval: What are the ones that are excluded? Of course that's where my mind goes.

Willis Regier: I wish I had time to tell you some of these, but they tend to be misogynistic. There are some that are very anti-women, and there are others that are just cruel. But it's also interesting that some of the cruel ones seem to make into almost all of the anthologies. A favourite of mine is the envious man and the greedy man who were both praying at the same time, and Apollo, to whom they were praying, decides, well, I can't seem to satisfy these people but I will try. He told them, 'All right, you are very greedy and you are very envious. I will grant your prayers as long as I will grant to the other person twice what I give to you.' So the greedy man being very greedy thought, ah, I'm going to do very well here, I will let the envious man go first. And the envious man thought for a moment and he said, 'I wish to lose one eye.'

Ramona Koval: Oh, what a rat! What a silly person.

Willis Regier: Yes, but this makes it into the versions that were transmitted to children for years and years.

Ramona Koval: I think that's a good one for children to learn, frankly. Don't you?

Willis Regier: Actually I'm not afraid of children, I think children could hear all of the fables and benefit from them. There are some that seem, however, to be so adult that I'm not sure a child would understand it.

Ramona Koval: I think they'd understand that.

Willis Regier: Probably so.

Ramona Koval: Children can be pretty visceral themselves, can't they.

Willis Regier: Yes. I really recommend that adults go back to Aesop and read him. The fables are wonderful and I think adults would be surprised not only to see some of those that they will remember from childhood but how many they don't know and will be all the more attracted to this extraordinary mind who is considered to be one of the ancient sages of Greece.

Ramona Koval: What about 'The Cock and the Jewel', because that's one that can be differently interpreted, can't it. Tell us that one.

Willis Regier: I'll be happy to. I'll try to be fast and give you two versions. The Croxall version has a young cock who is going around the farmyard looking for something to eat and he finds a diamond, and he tosses it aside, saying, 'Pah! What good is a diamond to me? I'm looking for something to eat.' And Croxall's moral for this is a good person knows what's good for him and is not distracted by baubles or ornaments. When Croxall's version...that was L'Estrange's version...when Croxalls' version comes up he tells the same story, the cock finds the diamond and tosses it aside, but his moral is that stupid creatures don't understand the value of things. This fable is sometimes used as a story about how to interpret fables, that only those who really understand fables will understand what a diamond is good for.

Ramona Koval: I see, a bit of self-referential post-modernism there.

Willis Regier: Actually that notion of how to interpret fables goes way, way back, back to the Romans.

Ramona Koval: But after Croxall there was Thomas James, Townsend, and Joseph Jacobs, but more recently Laura Gibbs has compiled a translation of 600 fables, and you think that that's the best place to go for authentic versions. What distinguishes her book?

Willis Regier: I highly recommend this little anthology. Although it is small and inexpensive it is the most inclusive of all the fables, and in some cases she gives different versions so people can compare them. She is also the only translator who has thoroughly gone back to check the oldest versions, whether they're Latin or Greek, and to translate from those oldest versions. She also has a terrific introduction. The only thing that I lament about her edition is she doesn't have The Legendary Life of Aesop.

Ramona Koval: And because that just doesn't put them in context, is that right?

Willis Regier: Well, it's just such a fascinating legend in its own respect. And to emphasise this again, The Legendary Life of Aesop shows him telling fables, so it gives you a notion of how these fables were supposed to be used in adult life.

Willis Regier: He has a style that is all his own. Samuel Taylor Coleridge loved L'Estrange because of what he called his flang [phonetic spelling], and that is a late 17th century slang that is 'full of life'. The animals really come to life. And this is something that I think people just have to sample for themselves, but if they could I'd recommend that they get both the L'Estrange translation which is available from the Everyman edition and the Gibbs translation which is available in Oxford paperback, and read them both. That will give them a better sense than I could of how different the translations are and how important the tradition has been for hundreds of years.

Ramona Koval: Phaedrus thought that Aesop was important...I just thought I'd read the prologue to his Latin translation to show how important he was. It says:

What from the founder Aesop fell,In neat familiar verse I tell:Twofold's the genius of the page,To make you smile and make you sage.But if the critics we displease,By wrangling brutes and talking trees,Let them remember, ere they blame,We're working neither sin nor shame;'Tis but a play to form the youth By fiction, in the cause of truth.

It's good, isn't it.

Willis Regier: Beautiful, yes, and a very good translation.

Ramona Koval: Yes, who did that one?

Willis Regier: I'm not sure I know.

Ramona Koval: Big tick for them. Well, I think everybody is now going to be rooting out Aesop's fables and reading about foxes and lions and chickens and diamonds for the rest of the week.

Willis Regier: And they will enjoy it. And I thank you for giving attention to him.

Ramona Koval: Thank you for writing the essay, and thank you for being on the show.

Willis Regier: A great pleasure, thank you.

Ramona Koval: Willis Regier is director of the University of Illinois Press. His own books include Book of the Sphinx which is published by the University of Nebraska Press, that's a 2004 book, and the one we spoke about before In Praise of Flattery which is also a University of Nebraska Press book published last year in 2007.

Guests

Willis Regier

Director of the University of Illinois Press Author of Book of the Sphinx University of Nebraska Press, 2004 In Praise of Flattery University of Nebraska Press, 2007